LaTanya Richardson Jackson
: Grandma Sands

LaTanya Richardson Jackson is a native of Atlanta, Georgia and a graduate of Spelman College with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre. Her professional theater credits include many years at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theatre where she appeared in the critically acclaimed For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf. She has performed for Douglas Turner Ward at The Negro Ensemble Company, Mike Nichols and The Second Stage Theatre Company, Neema Barnett and The Manhattan Theatre Club, Joanne Woodward and the Westport Country Playhouse and Kenny Leon at the Kennedy Center, to name a few. She starred on Broadway in the Tony® Award-winning revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, directed by Bartlett Sher, which was attended by President and Mrs. Obama. Recently she was in the play Love Loss and What I Wore at New York’s Westside Theatre and directed August Wilson’s Two Trains Running at the True Colors Theatre in Atlanta.

A past trustee of Spelman College, Jackson presently serves on the Advisory Board of The Women’s Center there. She is a board member of the Ebony Repertory Theatre, The Urban World Film Festival and Artists for a New South Africa. She serves on the advisory council of several organizations including Atlanta’s True Colors Theatre and is a tireless advocate of The Rowell Foster Children’s Positive Plan, Save Africa’s Children and Marion Wright Edelman’s Children’s Defense Fund.

Jackson has garnered a number of awards, some of which include awards from the Atlanta Urban League Guild, The United Negro College Fund, The Broward County Public Library, The National Kidney Foundation and The Catalog for Giving. Recently she and her husband, actor Samuel L. Jackson, were among the recipients of The National Action Network’s Keeper of The Dream Award presented by Reverend Al Sharpton and President Obama. The Jacksons were honored September 2012 in New York with The Metropolitan Museum of Art Humanitarian Award. In April 2012, they received the SCLC/W.O.M.E.N Drum Major for Justice Award. Jackson received her Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Spelman College.

Jackson is a member of the West Angeles Church of God In Christ in Los Angeles, California where Bishop Charles E. Blake is the Pastor. LaTanya and Samuel have one exceptional daughter, Zoe Dove, who is an associate producer for Maggie Vision at ESPN in New York City.